Sunday Afternoons and Wu

I miss Sunday. It is a day of the week that seems to have vanished into a smokey haze of busy-ness. Like Scarlet, peering into the fog after a Rhett who no longer gives a damn, I won’t weep over my lost Sunday’s.

The GCT was a warm and inviting place to spend a cold wintery afternoon before the snow began to fall.

I will latch onto my Sunday’s again someday. If Scarlet’s calculations were correct, and tomorrow is another day, it follows that in seven tomorrows, it will be Sunday again. What I lack in patience, I make up for in relentless determination.

When I try to remember what I can first remember, Sunday mornings come to my mind. Few things are as fascinating to a child as his or her own little feet. Possibly that is why my earliest memories are of Sunday’s, when black patent Mary Janes replaced sneakers,and lace edged socks frilled around my tiny ankles.

My three year old sensibilities informed me that Sunday’s were significant. The ride to the tidy brick Methodist church from our little house on Fifth Avenue, my father in his blue suit, my mother in her hat and gloves was as ceremonious to a young child clutching a diminutive purse containing a dime and a colorful little hanky, as a ride from Buckingham to Windsor.

But the Sunday afternoons of my early adulthood are what I miss the most, because they once allowed for an indulgent rest that might include a visit to a museum, a good book, or a trip to the park with the children. Now it is all busy-ness, making up for “lost time.” As if.

So today was a great blessing, in that business morphed into pleasure, for our vocal band is all about music, and music and song is about as restorative as it gets.

The afternoon was especially relaxing because they performed in the small venue of the Germantown Community Theatre without any sort of sound enhancement or microphones. It was lovely, and they loved singing to an audience in the way that they sing to each other at our weekly rehearsals. And the audience loved it, too, because the performance celebrated something almost sacred, the relationship between an artist and the audience, and the art that connects them.

Outside, the skies were taking on the silvery appearance of an old glass mirror and the wind carried the whiff of the snow that would soon fall. The anticipation of the approaching “wintry mix” added to the connection we all felt, for the people who had dressed in warm sweaters and coats and gathered together to listen to songs on this freezing Sunday afternoon shared a special bond. By simply being there, they were expressing their appreciation in the most profound means of applause.

After the concert, several of us adjourned to Mr. Wu’s for an early supper of steamed sea bass, Peking duck, and shrimp and spinach. Mr. Wu arrived sometime during our dinner, and prepared some of his special jasmine tea for us, a fragrant tea that brought to our noses the scent of a meadow dancing with flowers in the spring.

It was a sweet Sunday afternoon, and as I drove home, the snow arrived, dusting my windshield like Domino sugar.